Thursday, December 25, 2008

2008 was a brute, but I suspect that 2009 will make it look like Tickle-Me-Elmo for sheer high-octane ugliness. One thing's certain: our skill at avoiding the obvious is second to none.

There would seem to be numerous drastic issues - you know, amusing trivia like a constantly growing population facing a shrinking global supply of food & fuel, a polar icecap going tits-up, & an economy with all the tender charm of GG Allin with a snootful of moonshine & coke - that are ALL about to come out to play ... much like a cat plays with a crippled bird before it eats it.

My species has gotten so good at pulling horseshoes out of its ass that I fear it now tends to believe that such a state of affairs is not only the norm but also its automatic birthright. Unless my historical intuition is leading me astray (& oh how desperately I want that to be true), I'd say we're overdue to give it one more try ... & come up with nothing more reassuring than a bad case of global stinkfinger, & a total lack of alibis.

We've been partying like it's 1999 since long before that year, & the party's just about over now.The hangover from all of this is gonna be a real bitch.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

"Well, in fact I did change my mind … from very-reluctantly Pro to increasingly-angrier Anti.

PROTIP: When your first piece-of-shit proposal gets shot down in flames, coming back with an even lousier plan may not be the most cunning move in the book.

The Mother Of All Ratfucks is on hold … now it needs to be thrown into a nice clean body-bag. Voters should be telling Obama that if he keeps pimping for this garbage, he’ll wind up being the last Democratic POTUS ever, because his party will self-destruct from inside - he needs to think about the implications of succeeding where Rove failed in that regard. NEITHER major party has any high regard among Americans anymore, see Congress’ popularity-ratings for details.

Nationalize the shitpile & turn it into a make-work project for all the struggling MBAs & undergrads - it’ll take years to pick the gold-nuggets out of the septic-tank, but at least that way, lower-class Yankees don’t get stuck paying Ferrari-prices for a lot full of Gremlins.

Slap a bloody moratorium on foreclosures - America has too many homeless NOW & not enough aid, & housing-prices can use the boost that’d come from renegotiated mortgages being paid up, instead of the obscene spectacle of legions of homes slowly but surely rotting away (even at legal-theft bargain-rates) with nobody able to pony up the down-payment.

You wanna talk prophylaxis? Get some of these “MoneySluts, Inc.” gimme-gimme sociopaths into psychiatric treatment &/or prison-cells, NOW - the global economy really can’t afford any more of the Charlie-Manson-School-Of-Economics approach at this point. Big brokerages ought to be required to test for psych-disorders as part of their licensing process.

The current economic predicate is going to create more & more of these SNAFUs, & they’re going to be bigger & harder to survive every time, because of the not-very-swift “logic” being used to maintain the “Metastatic Tumor” model our economy is based on. The time when “Captains Of Industry, Ltd.” could look forward to new frontiers to rape & pillage is over. Get the world’s brainiacs together to start hashing out how to set up & run a sustainable equilibrium-based economy … because without it we’re ALL going to be terminally fucked in about 10 years, if that. The global-resource pie is as big as it’ll ever be right now - sadly, the same cannot be said for population or consumption. If we just keep leaving the status-quo in play, THAT “correction” is going to be unbelievably horrific.

It’s going to take an awful lot more than BushCo cutting a big check to fix the mess we’re all in now. We ALL screwed the pooch - & we’re ALL going to be raising the puppies."

Another gob of nutritious booger-meat c/o Sadly, No! --- which now qualifies me as a nihilist, according to someone or other who may or may not know what "nihilist" means:

...

(PereUbu said:)"Why, would that be the same Jeffrey Goldberg who told us all the other day that we should all be afraid, very afraid, because al-Qaeda is just one nuclear weapon away from having a nuclear weapon, and that would be the ONLY thing we should elect a President on?"

Hrmmm. Fascinating.

Just how Strangelovian must your brain be before you can blithely overlook the fact that the same GOP pulling Yanks’ chains with the boogyman of “Al Qaida + NEW-CLEAR WEAPONZ = DOOOOOOM” is the one that couldn’t be bothered to decapitate it in Tora Bora … with grunts directly ordered to remain inert by Rumsfeld while boxing in their target on 3 of 4 sides, no less?

Then weaponize THAT brain-fart, by frenetically slopping a bullshit topping on their bullshit-burger made of “Dems Will Have Your Kids Beheading Each Other & Reading the Koran 24/7″ … & dig right in?

I strongly suspect the evil force of Bad Pharmaceuticals here at work.

21st-Century Yankeestan may need a Mandatory Elected-Member Detox Program even worse than it needs radical electoral reform. Indeed, the lack of the former may inherently render the latter futile.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

"I’m not above fighting stupidity with juvenilia. Merely trying to forlornly wave mature wisdom in its face is like casting pearls before pubic-lice."

*

"Remember Rove in 2006, saying he had “THE math” because he just KNEW if they acted enough like winners, they’d pull yet another horseshoe out of their ass? Victory via bullshit. That’s exactly what you’re proposing the Dems do now - when they’re ahead, with no realistic chance of that situation changing from now until November. Ask ol’ Karl how swell that worked out for him - & ask Obama how deeply he regrets not taking Rove’s “free advice” to play dirty against Clinton in the primary.

Again: look at the special elections. The GOP has been playing the same old smear-game, because frankly, it’s all they know how to do anymore … & it’s whelping that sick old bitch of a party a big fat litter of failhounds, over & over & over again - & remember, they’re old pros at it, too. Think about the future implications of deciding to start aping people like Karl Rove. Are you sure that’s who you want to imitate in 2008?

Possibly the best con-job he ever pulled was to convince America that the nimble use of smear-tactics in politics was what won Shrub his throne, & not rigging the vote. Unless you can likewise put a thumb on the electoral scales, I’d recommend staying off that low-road - or you may be waiting a very very long time indeed for the pig to come out of that tunnel.It’s a cliche for a very good reason: when your enemy is making mistakes, the last thing you should do is interrupt them. What exactly would playing the GOP’s game with a sudden shift to the low-road be? Yup - defeatus interruptus.

I think you underestimate both the level of utter nausea regular folks (who don’t really give a tinker’s damn who’s ahead right now or why) now feel when they see yet more dirty politics, & the extent to which the GOP has had to steal elections they didn’t really win - & not just since 2000, either. You brought up McGovern in the previous thread on this topic … so, what about CREEP’s large grab-bag of dirty-tricks? The reason they worked so well in 1972 was because all those black-bag ops to retrieve the enemy’s “Poison” files (like the Watergate job) got them a bonanza of REAL dirt for them to dish on the Democratic Party, dirt they knew the Dems couldn’t deny without looking stupid - & the scandal was that they got caught doing it.

Vicki Iseman! Vicki Iseman! Vicki Iseman!Old and tired! Old and tired! Old and tired!4 more years of Bush! 4 more years of Bush!100 years in Iraq! 100 years in Iraq!Private jets! Private jets! Private jets!Keating 5! Keating 5! Keating 5!

What do these all have in common?They’re all totally true.Oh … & there’s PLENTY more where they came from, too.

You don’t need to use the “make nasty shit up” approach to torpedo the GOP this fall - just remind people what a craven kneepad-jockey McCain The Third truly is. For Christ’s sweet sake, the fool’s running against his OWN Senate bill on immigration - & that’s just for starters.

Two advantages over the “creative” tactic: they can’t deny it without looking even dumber than usual … & you don’t come across as Rove-clones while doing it. It just so happens that from what I’m seeing in terms of the 2 campaigns, the truth actually will set you free, at least this time.

The phony-smear rat-fucking approach will be loads of fun … & it’ll be a knife in Obama’s back, right when he’s got the race in the bag. Do you want to have fun, or do you want the other team to lose? Making them go down in flames isn’t much fun at all - until election night. Bullshit rumor-milling is a righteous par-TAY, all the way, until that night … & for 4 years after that, minimum.

Choose wisely."

*

"Amusing “Ultra-Liberal CBC” anecdote time: back in 1991 I was one of the 20 or so folks at the Peace Camp who were camped out on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery protesting the outset of Desert Storm … & after a night of alternately being threatened by skinheads & a large contingent of obviously eager-to-hurt cops, the CBC Radio crew came by bright & early in the morning “to get our side of the story” - a few of us were smart enough to tell them to bugger off (politely), but we were overruled. They sat there for over an hour asking stock questions & looking totally bored. As soon as one young lady jokingly blurted “it’s a great excuse not to have to go to school” they acted like they’d just won the lottery, packed up their gear, & promptly scooted back to their studio. Poor kid was heartbroken when she realized what’d just happened. Bonus points for guessing which sound-bite they used that day, eh?"

"Hmm - these FP folks have some, er, UNIQUE taste in brainiacs.Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew - “national patriarch” - oh, man, must be some rockin’ groupie-action with THAT job-title, eh? Don’t know what his “Laissez-Faire Procreation” is but it doesn’t sound good. Mayhap not so different from the “breed ourselves into extinction for Jesus” line still being pitched by another “intellectual” - the Pope. Sure, throw him in - why not? Just think of it as yet another version of kissing his ring! Those uber-pimp glamrock outfits of his just SCREAM “towering intellect” … n’est-ce pas?

Putting Francis “Die History Die” Fukuyama on there looks like the intellectual equivalent of a pity fuck. Just as wrong as Bubba Kristol, but with 40% bigger words!

Michael Ignatieff? Oh, PLEASE - deputy leader of a Liberal party so lacking in stones OR savvy that even a greasy nonentity like Stephen Harper makes them look like the Keystone Kops? The ghosts of Pearson & Trudeau are blowing chunks right now.

Christopher Hitchens? Giving atheists a bad rep since 2003 - for money. Throw a few extra rounds of Glenfiddich in his piehole & watch the hilarity ensue!

Naomi Klein? OOPSIES. Too lucid & influential - redacted.

This, ladies & germs, is the lot the REAL elite cocks their ears to when they want premium-grade advice on how to keep the Bread & Circuses Road-Show on tour for another few years. Pitiful.

Christ, they may as well have included Jet Li, Metroid Prime & Chuck Norris while they were at it. Wankers."